Award-winning actor-playwright David Drake begins performance in his new one-man show, Son of Drakula, Oct. 24 at New York's Dance Theatre Workshop.
The limited three-week engagement of Drake's new piece runs through Nov. 10 and is the first one-man show from the writer since his Obie-winning debut in The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me. Drake portrays 30 characters in his new work, which is an autobiographical monologue about his lengthy odyssey tracing his family's bloodline into the Romanian veins of Vlad the Impaler. The quest takes the actor-writer through an Eastern European journey where he tackles such cultural phenomena as "the endurance of Bram Stoker's creation, the familial obstacles of male intimacy, modern gay identity politics, post-Communist Eastern Europe and the wild world of vampire worship." Drake premiered Son of Drakula this past May at Baltimore's Theatre Project.
Chuck Brown directs, and the remainder of the creative team comprises Mark T. Simpson (set and lighting design), Quentin Chiappetta (original music and sound design) and John Bartlett (costume design). Kathleen Brant is the production's assistant director.
Drake captured the public's attention in his autobiographical one-man show, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, which received critical praise and an Obie Award and was subsequently turned into a feature film, which was released on DVD/video in May. A recent evening at Anthology Film Archives, "Drake's Cake: A Night of Movies Starring David Drake," boasted four shorts that Drake acted in as well as his full-length turn in "The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me." The playwright-performer is an artist-in-residence at the Dance Theater Workshop, and he contributes a monthly column, "The Cabaret Beat," for the national edition of Playbill Magazine.
Dance Theatre Workshop is located in New York City at 219 West 19th Street. The performance schedule is Thursday through Sunday evenings at 7 PM with matinees on Sundays at 2 PM. Tickets are priced at $32 and can be ordered by calling (212) 924-0077. —By Andrew Gans
